Dangerous Tides (Drake Sisters 4)

"You aren't normal, Libby," he said with a faint smile, his tone affectionate.

"I suppose not. Everyone teased me." She pointed to the tide pool. "I've moved on to starfish, but I leave them in their own environment."

"Starfish?" He gave a little sigh. "That isn't saying much for your taste. Starfish are carnivorous. They eat whatever they get their feet on. They flip their stomachs outside their mouth and digest prey from the inside out. Only after the animal is completely digested do they pull their stomachs back inside."

"Ew. You sound like Abigail. Leave me some illusions."

Tyson laughed aloud and it startled him. He didn't laugh. He pretended to laugh at appropriate times for the sake of his cousin, one of his small concessions to social niceties, but it was never genuine. Libby actually made him laugh for real. She fascinated him. She was a woman born into a family of con artists. Just knowing that should be reason enough to stay away from her, but he never could. She was just so . . . so nice. So real. Over the years he'd come to believe she wasn't part of her family's con, but was, instead, a victim of the very people who should have loved her, just as he was to some extent. Without the influence of his aunt, he doubted if he could even function in society at all.

"You're getting sunburned. I think we need to get you into the shade."

"I used sunscreen."

"Well, your nose is getting red."

"Great." Of course her nose had to be burned. She had such fair skin that every time she removed her sunglasses she looked like a raccoon. Her glasses were staying firmly in place. "I'm not certain there's much shade on this part of the beach." For some silly reason she wanted to stay in his company just a little while longer, even though she knew she should get out of the sun.

He took her hand and gently tugged until she followed him back to the chairs. "Where's your sunscreen?" He picked both chairs up as if they weighed nothing and moved them against the wall of the cliff in the shade. "Sit down here. You really need sunscreen but maybe this will do."

She was not going to have her nose be white, covered in zinc while she sat there talking to him. "I left it up at the house."

He folded his arms across his chest. He had great arms, all rippling muscle. He was a biochemist. How did he get arms like that? Libby bit her lip to keep from sighing. She needed darker glasses so she could just get away with staring. If he kept his mouth shut, she could fantasize and then life would be great again. If only he wouldn't talk.

"I saw the brain scans of my head after the accident."

Libby stiffened. All at once she was totally tense, leery of the real reason he must have sought her out. There was belligerence in his voice. She remained silent and pinned her gaze on the foaming surf.

"Shayner tells me I had major head trauma. Fractures, swelling of the brain, blood clots, that sort of thing. Basically, I had scrambled eggs for a cerebellum."

"Interesting."

"He said I should be a vegetable. Instead, I'm walking around with a smashed chest and a few broken ribs."

"I see."

"What do you see?" Tyson leaned close to her, his piercing eyes boring into her. "What the hell did you do? And don't give me any of your magic crap. I don't believe in it and I want the real explanation. You did something. You had to have. Shayner said before you were in that room with me, I was a vegetable. After, other than a few cracked ribs and other minor injuries, I was perfectly fine. What the hell did you do?"

"Crap?" Libby repeated. "Our magic crap?" Fury shimmered through her body, gripped her hard so that she actually looked around for something to throw at him. She'd endangered her sisters as well as her own life and he called what she did crap. "Is that what you call what I do?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "You know, I'm not saying what you do doesn't have some small validity, I'm just saying it isn't done with magic. You really don't believe in witches and voodoo and casting spells, do you? You're a doctor. There's a reasonable scientific explanation for what you do."

"Is there?"

"Well, of course. And I want to know what it is."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Why? Are you serious? Libby, if what everyone says is the truth, you restored by what all accounts was an irreparably damaged brain--my brain. The possibilities, the benefits alone for medicine and science are beyond staggering, if you really could do it. Who the hell wouldn't want to know how you did what you did?"

She regarded him for a long time while the gulls cried overhead and the waves pounded the shore. If her blood pressure went up any more at the utter disbelief in his voice, she was going to stroke out. "You figure it out and come tell me how my sisters and I do that magic crap. It will give us all a good laugh."

He glared at her. He was getting angry. He'd come with the best of intentions, but he didn't want to hear her defend herself or her family. "I don't care to be the butt of your jokes. You've got this entire town fooled, but I don't buy it. Just tell me."

"Why don't you start with examining the tests? Maybe they were falsified."

"I already did that. They appear authentic. And you were busy in another part of the hospital when I was brought in so I don't see how you would have had time to tamper with the records."

"You checked to see if I falsified records?" Libby was appalled. She drew in a deep breath. "Go away."

"I had to rule falsifying documents out. That's the oldest scam in the world," Ty said dismissively. "Just tell me how you did it."

"You think I gave you some new drug I don't share with other brain-damaged patients?" Libby was furious. "I didn't do a thing. The scan must have been wrong. Maybe there was a glitch in the system. I'm tired and you're annoying me. Go away."

Tyson let a few moments of silence go by, hoping she'd calm down. "You're tossing me out because you know I'm going to fixate on this. That's just mean, Drake." He shaded his eyes and looked up at the cliff. "While you're at it, explain why you don't have erosion by your house when every other cliff around here is slowly crumbling. And yes, I took samples of the soil as well."

"I'm intrigued by your scintillating conversation, really I am, but erosion and paint don't do it for me. I'm reading. I'm resting. Or I was until you came along. If you're quite done insulting my family, Tyson, why don't you go back to your lab? I'm sure sleeping on the floor and eating Cracker Jacks while you discover the cure to the world's most deadly diseases is much more fulfilling than hanging around Sea Haven harassing the locals."

A slow grin replaced the stubborn set to his mouth. "You've been checking up on me. I sleep on the couch, not on the floor, but I do eat Cracker Jacks. Princess Libby Drake is interested enough to check up on me. Who have you been talking to?"

Libby felt the color sweeping up her neck into her face. She ducked her head so her hair fell in a cloud around her as she pretended to study her fingernails. "I run into Sam once in a while and he must have mentioned it."

"Oh, no, he didn't. Sam doesn't know anything about my eating habits in the lab and he isn't interested enough to ask." He sounded triumphant. "You actually asked about me. And when I was brought into the hospital after the fall you came to see me."

She shrugg

ed. "I may have. Why wouldn't I? We went to school together. I checked in on you and left. You were Shayner's patient and I was on my way home."

"And I'm supposed to believe you check on all of Shayner's patients? Sorry, princess, that just doesn't fly. You had the righteous inflection and that little bite to your tone that usually throws people, but you aren't throwing me. Not this time. Admit it. You're interested in me . . ."

Libby gasped. "I'm so not interested in you. You're an arrogant--" She broke off abruptly as a shadow passed over them, momentarily blocking out the bright sun. Distracted, she looked around. "Something's wrong."

"Why do you think that?"

"The shadow." She was more than distracted, standing to peer around her.

"It was a bird, Libby, a seagull."

"It wasn't a bird."

Her alarm was catching and it annoyed him. There was nothing wrong. "C'mon, Drake. Do you really think I'm going to fall for that? You just don't want to admit, you're interested in me."

Libby ignored him, lifting her arms straight into the air. At once the wind answered, rushing past them in a small gust away from the sea towards the house on the cliff.

"What are you doing?" Ty asked suspiciously.

"That magic crap you don't believe in. Be quiet for a minute and let me concentrate. Something is really wrong. I can feel it." She frowned, facing the ocean, her eyes restless, quartering the beach around them.

Ty took a long look around, first at the ocean. It was fairly calm and he saw no signs of a coming sleeper wave, let alone a tsunami. What else could be wrong? He glanced up at the sky.

"A seagull might dive-bomb us," he reported, "but I don't see a plane going down."

She shot him a look that was meant to silence him.

He started to grin at her, amused by her certainty, but his gut reacted, an instinct that told him to move fast. Ty stood up abruptly, circled her waist and dragged her away from the chairs toward the steps. She was slight, but his ribs and smashed sternum protested, feeling like his chest was being ripped apart. He kept moving. He didn't believe in magic, but he trusted instincts and his own alarm bells were shrieking. A good scientist needed gut feelings and his had been honed by his firefighting training.